Lens User Stories

Mark Henderson

20 August 2018

First, I want to say Bravo! for building a truly terrific website at Lens.org! I find myself recommending it to people all the time, from professional contacts, to friends and family, to clients, to perfect strangers. Well done.

Second, are you aware of anyone who has created a curriculum for teaching innovation/engineering/technology using Lens.org as a primary instructional tool? I sometimes present lectures to to engineering and technology students and entrepreneurs. I have used Lens.org in my teaching in the past, and I intend to use it even more in the coming months. Can you recommend any teaching materials that are built around the Lens site for teaching patent literacy?

Third, I have in mind a big-picture idea for additional public-source data that could substantially enhance the Lens.org dataset. Namely, product information (e.g., information ingested from product catalogs, brochures, advertisements, marketing publications, etc.) The Lens already goes a long way toward helping researchers answer the question “Does this thing already exist?” I believe integrating product information could take the tool even further. I would be delighted to have the chance to discuss my thoughts with someone involved in the Lens.org project.”

Robert Beebe

1 May 2018

I used Lens.org to locate a horseshoe patent from 1900 today and shared the PDF file from your site with the researcher I was helping. The returned results were much cleaner and easier to sort through than any of the other free patent search sites I’ve used. I was able to create a collection for the inventor and add a note for who had requested the patent for use later should the need arise, no need to repeat the search or make a note that I might or might not be able to locate when needed it is right there on the site. This ability to tag, make notes directly on a patent, and create collections of patents makes it possible to locate the patents I need when I need them in the future without the need to repeat the same search. I’m still thinking of ways that these three features can make doing my job easier. When I wrote earlier with a question about a limitation of the site to return results for U.S. patents prior to 1899 I received not just one but two separate emails, within 24 hours on a weekend, looking to resolve the issue. By the end of the first workday following the first steps were already taken to help resolve the issue. Your concern for making the site as useful to all interested should not be questioned. I look forward to years of using your site in my work conducting research on U.S. patents.”

Nick Hale

13 April 2018

Amazing service, Patents + Scholarly articles. I really like the updates to the Lens platform that link patents to scholarly articles. I’m familiar with Microsoft Academic Graph and all of the patent sources, but how did you create a relational link between the scholarly articles and the patents that cite them?”

Martin

21 March 2018

I applaud your services. I used a number of patent search services over the last 20 years and yours is the bestI tried so far. I prefer this one from currently available commercial ones, even thus The Lens lacks some features in comparison to the others. Really good job.”

Hazel Housden

14 March 2018

I find Lens to be the best free online tool for patent searching - thanks for providing it! I previously used two commercial searching platforms (Patsnap and PatBase) and both of them had a feature that I found very useful on occasion, so I wondered if you have any plans to introduce it to PatentLens.”

Ron Penaflor

22 February 2017

I have been using your website for a few month now, a I find it to be quite impressive in both search and analytics, and also find your platform enhancements make your site very intuitive and easy to navigate and use. If possible, would your team be able to add more data fields to the “Export/Import Collections and Results”

Paul Carpenter

10 February 2018

I am a big fan of lens.org and recommend it highly to colleagues and clients alike. I am undertaking some research and have come across an anomaly I am unable to explain… Many thanks”

Ross Maclachlan

8 June 2017

I have recently become aware of the lens and am very impressed with it. Great to be able to work with so many documents in a freely available system and to have inbuilt analysis visualisation. The pdf preview is also invaluable, and everything seems to happen so quickly. We are undertaking a research project into patent use for creative engineering problem solving. I have started using Lens to develop patent sets - before I was going between different free platforms. 10 years ago I was a patent examiner, and whilst I thought the office’s system wasn’t perfect, I have never seen an interface on the public databases that is anywhere near as good. Lens is better in many ways”

Benoit Sable

31 January 2017

Hello, Your tool is excellent and much better than the other I tried.
If I can give you few advice I would recommend you to try to implement the following functions :
- add a function to be able to highlight different words in different colors, in all the texts of the patent publications under review. This is really helpful to find quickly the information we are looking for in a text and would be useful for all searches in all technical fields.
- display one (and even better all) picture of a patent publication in the same time as the abstract. This is essential for searches in mechanical publications.”